To honor DooShan, we asked him to give a few words of advice to the community:

I was pretty discouraged since there was so many awesome designers nominated for the Ultimate Top 9 for 2012. I was convinced that designers such as Designspot, Mark™ and freaky would be the ones to take the nomination. I voted for them when they were nominated for Top 9 of the month — I love their work a lot. I’m very thankful to all the people who voted and support my work and what I do. I especially thank the 99designs team who put me on this path, gave me a chance to work with great people in this community, and the chance to work with clients from all around the world.

(To my fellow peers) I know this sounds cliché but don’t ever give up, ever. If you see yourself in this business and love designing then it’s important to have clear goals, but don’t focus on them so much that you loose your creativity. Be more focused on your work, and the happiness it provides, and your goals will be fulfilled along the way.

Sometimes things will not go as planned, like not winning a contest for some time or your creativity is lower than usual and so on. Just know in those moments you are learning a lot and it’s time to LEVEL UP, and you will be given an opportunity to explore new things, styles and ideas. When you realize this, take your pen, open your notebook and start sketching. You will start thinking about things you never thought about before and that happiness for your work will come back fully charged… it always does.